I want to throw out some theological words to you this week. You do not need to shy away from them because I am going to explain them and I think you will be encouraged and challenged. These words are the transcendence of God and the immanence of God.
God's immanence refers to God's nearness to us. We experience Him and His immanence when we feel His comfort, peace, love, etc. This conjures up in our minds and hearts the realities that God is our Father, Daddy, Friend, Lover of our soul, etc. I wrote about this last week regarding God as Daddy. Our response to God's immanence is intimacy with Him. Intimacy means we want to "get in God's lap". Jesus said it this way in John 15:25, "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you."
God's transcendence refers to God as being completely different and greater than any of us as a human. His transcendence gives us understanding that He is holy, perfect, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. It is recognizing that each of us exist because we were God's idea. This evokes an incredible sense of God's "otherness" from us. Our response to God's transcendence is worship from a proper fear of the Lord. This fear is not being fearful of His punishment because that has been taken care of at the cross. The fear of the Lord means we have such awe of Him that we want to bow down and tell Him how great and awesome He is. In 1 Peter 2:7 God says, "Honor all people, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the king."
And do you know what is really incredible? We are united to God through our faith in Jesus Christ. We live in union with Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the triune God.
We want to be careful that we do not over emphasize either of these more than the other. Both of these aspects of God are equally important.
This week, let's enjoy the closeness and awe of our God Whom we are united with!
Live Free In Christ,
Mark Maulding, President and Founder
www.GraceLifeInternational.com
All Content Copyright © 2012 Mark Maulding
